


Letter to the Universe

by helena_s_renn



Category: Def Leppard, Music RPF
Genre: Angst and Feels, Gen, M/M, Pining, Smoking/Vaping, Unrequited Love, tour break
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 11:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17466905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helena_s_renn/pseuds/helena_s_renn
Summary: On tour break in the summer of '18, Joe spills his guts.





	Letter to the Universe

2018, August

 

The sun is going down again, and I find myself out in the growing twilight, examining its shades from one minute to the next, always changing. The ring around the setting sun bleeds crimson-red fire then molten orange lava; far above, the cloudless sky rises infinite over an earthbound haze, a clear faded cerulean. I wear a ring. You wear a ring. They don't match, do they? Yours, gold and traditional; mine, silver and huge and clunky. I have air, words. You got whatever you wanted... after a fashion. 

Two giant spruces, one a standard sylvan green and one blue-tipped, stand guard along this private space. Across the back lawn, where sometimes the little one runs, a weeping willow hovers still as death; it is windless tonight. Other trees: birch, ash, I don't know. The year has been dry. It's high summer but already dusty green is giving way to a few brighter splashes. 

Out here on my deck again, evening waits for the music of crickets and owls. The boards and rails like our faces are getting weathered as seasons pass, in need of a coat of stain or paint. We all gave up cigarettes, even me, but I can't give up the routine rhythm of inhale, exhale, the cloud of smoke. The craving was too strong. Like heroin. Like sugar. So I bought a vape, shiny black and sleek. It tastes like you: warm blood orange and vanilla, slightly oily. 

Leaning against the railing, I think just one repeating refrain. I miss you. I want you. My heart cries love to you. Inadequate words, nothing like the turbulent taffy-pull feelings they try to express, which also amount to nothing, meaningless. It's never changed in all these years beyond more explicit, cutting my soul deeper and deeper. I'll never really know you. How could I? Maybe in another place and time we might have met in the middle and lived a simple life without any of the trappings versus what amounts to royalty in exile. 

But for now, I'm here, keeping to myself. This life carefully created and vetted, these pretensions will never hold a candle to your flame. I pale, a puddle of nothing before your gaze. Let me touch you. Burn me. Scar me. It's all been done before. Over and over. 

 

It's still all about me, isn't it? By letting you be, by staying away, that's the only way I know to act out of anything resembling real, selfless love.

 

Fin.


End file.
